"Social Search Is the New Black." People don't seem to get the joke when I say this.

Anyway, "social networking" (or social search) has gone from marginal to almost mainstream in a little over a year. It's remarkable how almost every new start-up has a social media or community layer. On one level it's smart to leverage the community. (In people's heads is where most local knowledge is and social media in one sense is an extension of word of mouth.) Social media is one of the core elements of "Web 2.0." But skeptics tend to see social search/media as fashion and perhaps dressing up an offering that otherwise wouldn't be competitive or taken seriously.

Even though it was a late add, I think the Drilling Down panel "Social Search Is the New Black" will be one of the most compelling of the show. Social media is permeating virtually all the new sites being rolled out today, and a host of major media companies are seeking to build the next MySpace. Moreover, social search is at the core of Yahoo!'s strategy to differentiate from Google (see below), though Google is becoming more social at the margins.

I'm very pleased to say the speaker lineup on that panel will be diverse and very interesting:

Jeremy Zawodny, Technical Yahoo!, Yahoo!

Steven Marder, CEO, Eurekster

Chris DeVore , COO and cofounder, Judy's Book

Manish Chandra, CEO and founder, Kaboodle

Chris Tolles, VP of sales and marketing, Topix.net

Andy Gadiel, CEO, JamBase

As with the majority of sessions at this year's conference it will be moderated question and answer and so we should be able to get into the "meet" (get it) of the issues very rapidly.

If I trust someone about SF restaurants, if I knew his filter, the searches would be better. Social Search. You start [with] people you know, but [then you have] broader people (b/c so many people have recognized that person as the expert). It is something that has a huge potential. It combines the user participation model and the algorithmic model. You have the 6 degrees of separation model � to run that as a service/technology is a challenge.